Basket weaver and Country Living Guild member Jonathan Kline fulfills his dream of making traditional crafts while maintaining a rural lifestyle.

Jonathan Kline

Jonathan Kline

Jonathan Kline, a basketmaker in Trumansburg, N.Y., just outside Ithaca, is a little surprised whenever he hears people refer to his black-ash baskets as "collectibles." "In the simplest of terms, baskets were really the shopping bags of our early culture," Kline says. "Their original shape and construction were based more on utility than beauty or collectibility." But to think of a Kline basket in these "simplest of terms" today would render great disservice both to the art and to the artisan.

"I have always been impressed by handcrafts that remain true to function and native materials," says Kline.

Jonathan's Workroom

Jonathan's Workroom

Kline is naturally drawn to handcraft traditions. He was inspired by the Shaker and Taghkanic-region basketmakers common to the upper Hudson River Valley, where he was born and raised, and later by the village craftspeople in the mountains of Colombia, South America, where he lived for several months. "I knew that I wanted to work at a handcraft that would enable me to sustain a rural lifestyle and draw from the natural materials of the land," says Kline.